Day 5: Autumnal comforts

It was a beautiful day today.  Bright, clear but cold and the 3C temperatures last night had me thinking about turning the heating on this morning, despite the house still being at a reasonable 14C at 8am. The outside temperature climbed during the day to 12C but it never really felt warm and I

found myself doing up my cardigan just to put the rubbish out.  It was the sort of day that called for thick soup and homemade bread.

So soup was the first culinary exercise of the day.  This was a good opportunity to utilise the left over veg from last week before it was too old to eat and had to be consigned to the recycling bin, especially the cabbage, of which I seem to have bought rather a lot. So I started with the big stock pan, a splash of oil and two of the three remaining shallots, finely chopped. Added to this went some old carrots, peeled and chunked; a couple of misshapen spuds from the garden (possibly 'International kidney") peeled and cubed; the finely chopped woody stems of yesterday's purple sprouting broccoli; a piece of red cabbage that I couldn't get in the bowl when I made the spicy red cabbage; about two thirds of a savoy cabbage that I found in the salad drawer; the bottom of a bag of red lentils and about the same amount of pearly barley.  I added to this a couple of kettles-full of boiling water, a tin of tomatoes, a squeeze of tomato puree and two stock cubes.  Brought to the boil, the lid went on and I left it to simmer for 40 minutes or so until the barley was soft.

I remember back in the 90s there was a fad diet which centred around eating almost nothing but cabbage soup.  I know, because I did it for seven days.  It was a fairly sulphurous week - and neither satisfying nor very successful.  I didn't want this to be THAT sort of soup!  When the barley was soft I went at it with a hand blender just to thicken up the broth a bit, while still leaving plenty of substance so I could see what I was eating.  I added a couple of handfuls of soup pasta (alphabetti as that's what I had) a spoonful of Italian herbs and seasoning.  Three minutes later lunch was ready.  Served with a chunk of my homemade wholemeal and a scraping of parmesan it was just what the day demanded.

After it cooled I portioned the remainder into plastic freezer containers, putting two in the 'fridge for Tuesday and Wednesday's lunch and the remaining six in the freezer.  These I will use to form the bases for other sorts of meals, with new flavours and ingredients added.

Tonight sunset was at 1815. The nights are fairly drawing in and it's only a fortnight until the clocks go back.  As if chunky soup didn't provide comfort enough, I felt the need for my version of cauliflower cheese for supper.  I didn't want to use all the cauliflower (I want some for a curry later in the week) but I did want it to be substantial enough to fill me up, so I steamed it with half a can of butter beans (this is such a nice combination) and served it with a cheese and mustard sauce.  I finished it off with a crispy topping using up the last shallot, a clove of garlic, half a dozen crushed almonds, chopped parsley and the breadcrumbs made from the crusts of last week's cheese toasty!  Yum.

There's enough topping left over to add to my soup for the next two days, and a couple of spoonfuls of sauce that when cooled and set will make a tasty accompaniment to a salad sandwich (it's a bit like savoury spread).  However all this cooking means that I'm almost out of milk and cheese and most of that ageing veg has been used up.   I shall need another recce through the cupboards before I go shopping.

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